Looking up, she was concerned by the enormous figure of Jesus, nailed to a cross and suspended from the church roof. Christ’s pain was palpable: droplets of sweat and blood at his brow, the tension in the muscles and ligaments of his arms. Her eyes followed the line of his torso down to his narrow, almost feminine waist. She counted the ribs: they were all there. Quick physiological and diagnostic checks were a habit she had inherited from her father. She shuddered as her eyes stopped at one of the iron nails. We are a universally cruel species, she thought; we are sadly and happily more similar than we are different.

Vivek’s new father-in-law had given him an iron nail to put in his suit pocket, to ward off the evil eye. Priya had spat quietly on her son three times to do the same, as she pointlessly straightened his cravat. She rubbed his forehead where his skin was still creased from the turban he had worn the day before.

‘Eight hours in a turban is enough to scar a man for life,’ he laughed. She laughed too, because it was wonderful to see him so happy; to see how he looked at Caterina as she wafted down the aisle in a voluptuous taffeta gown, like a complex dandelion with purpose and grace.

Priya stole a look at her father. He was crying quietly while Nala patted him, her face wearing a familiar smile: half sympathetic, half embarrassed by his rare show of emotion.

Priya had been thinking about her brother’s wedding a lot lately. She remembered it well, even better than her own wedding. Most of all, she remembered her parents. Proud and hurt, they had accepted Shiranthi’s obeisance as Hindu custom dictated at the end of the ceremony. When they raised her from the floor where she sat at their feet, they embraced her and loved her as their own child.

Priya took a deep breath in and let it out, wiping away the tears. The priest nodded at her. She stepped forward and put her arms around her new daughter.

CHAPTER 18

Smrithi was still unmarried. Priya angrily straightened the pleats of her daughter’s heavy silk sari.

‘Stand up straight and smile,’ she barked, shuffling her over to the azalea bush. It was green and hadn’t flowered yet, creating a more neutral backdrop for the photos Priya wanted.

‘Siva,’ she instructed her husband, ‘take headshots, then a few from the chest up and a few full length so they can see the sari. Chin up Smrithi, look straight into the camera.’ She stood back, giving Siva a clear shot of his reluctant child.

‘Smile, Smrithi, please,’ he said.

‘I am, Appa.’

‘No, that’s a grimace. You have to look happy.’

‘But I’m not,’ she replied.